Long ago in the Windows 9x era there was also "Is this a Windows DLL file, or a transcript of a digestion noise" and the stuff was like "MSGRBL32.DLL"
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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rhowch
When scooby burns his tail
I guess strxfrm and the like date back to a period in the 80s when symbol names had to be kept short for the compiler/interpreter's sake. Like while BASIC back in those days technically allowed > 8 chr names, the interpreter only stored the first 8. In other words, the first 8 needed to be unique. As such, people tended to stick with <= 8 chr symbols to avoid interpreter issues. I think C allowed up to 31? But the culture of <= 8 prevailed nevertheless.
Then in the 90s, such restrictions were largely dropped in most languages, and symbol names ballooned in size to take advantage of this new freedom. In C++, you even had reserved words growing to the likes of reinterpret_cast around that time, but APIs just got ridiculous along the lines lengthy_class_name_followed_by_fully_spelled_out_method.
Today, people seem to have come to their senses and settled on more reasonable lengths, though not to 80s extremes. Like going back to C++, we have new reserved words like decltype and constexpr. In the 90s, these would likely have been spelled out in full like constant_expression?
i still have a vague mistrust of file extensions longer than three characters.
like a glass walkway, i know .jpeg is just as safe as .jpg, but there's a hint of uneasiness.
Then in the 90s, such restrictions were largely dropped in most languages, and symbol names ballooned in size to take advantage of this new freedom.
But with great freedom comes great responsibility. I think Microsoft went from digestion noices to indirectly advertising their stake in arthritis medicine. I mean my fingers ache just looking at C# or PowerShell.
What was so wrong about puts or cout? I know it's not the most intricate functions, but going from a 4chr function to "Console.WriteLine()" is a symbol.
And as long as I'm already a riled up old fart, let me tell you about autocompletion. Why does MS have to autocomplete entire commands from ambiguous strings?
And the kids don't get it. They don't even write the code anymore, let alone understand it... I want coffee flavoured coffee, heavy metal and for dark mode to fucking die!
That felt better, I'm sorry for anybody making it this long.
Dude what's with ur crusade against dark mode lol. It's not like dark mode replaced light mode.
Waddaya mean crusade? Have you accidentally seen of my other tirades?
Anyway:
- I dislike change. I know it's not a good argument, but I don't like change.
- I don't have a lot against dark mode, on a phone. But...
- Running an IDE or word processor in dark mode screams unprofessional to me. I work in a well lit office environment, during the day. In a bright office I struggle reading in dark mode.
- Using dark mode because you "don't want to have your eyes scorched", is the argument of a hobbyist, working in their bedroom.
- I like to view my end product on screen. I'm not printing documents in dark mode, and presentations are more easily viewable with a light background.
It's not an argument for or against dark mode, but dark mode seems like that time, back in the 90s, when people insisted on using a blue background for word processing. We're just going in circles on this.
In some cases it did. I often come across dark theme only websites.
Yes.
A few from llvm (maybe?)
- llyfr
- llanc
- llif
Cwtch is one of my favourite words. Pronounced like "clutch" without the L. It means hug.
"Give us a cwtch ye daft old sod" ❤️
oh wow that's nice. i'll see if i can remember it.
Wild assumption for me to make, but is it perhaps a potential origin for "coochie coo"?
Ooh that would be nice
Ah yes. A language forced onto unwilling participants by people who still think it should relevant in the modern age. And the other one is a Celtic language.
C will be relevant till the heat death of the universe. if humanity ever dooms itself back to the stone age, all it would require is some bloke to invent a rudimentary binary computer and some nerd to write a basic C compiler for it, humanity will doom itself again in less than 50 years.
It's sad when you realize that Welsh is actually a more niche language than the C standard library
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https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/mbsrtowcs.3.html
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strxfrm.3.html
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/wcstold.3p.html
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/wcscoll.3p.html
wcsoll in the picture is an error, unless it's Welsh.
according to Google translate:
rhowch: give
cwtch: hug
mwyn: ore
wmffre: Humphrey
The trick is that 'w' represents an actual double-U vowel sound in Welsh. Not remotely surprised that's what was picked up
I'm just scrolling by and saw the Welsh. I know none of the others, so by a process of elimination, I know them all.
Assuming the question implies an inclusive OR, I know all the answers too : True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True.
When the grass gets long at my welsh cottage I’m mwyn that wmffre
I'm pretty sure that is neither and was a text I sent last week when drunk...
Its cool that alcohol brings out your superpower of on-the-fly encryption
Cool... Crippling addiction... You say tomato I say... cries self to sleep
Are there any C libraries other than the standard library that use this kind of naming style?
Besides ncurses
ncursed
Dydw i ddim yn deall...
My partner has been learning a tiny bit of Welsh on Duolingo so this got a giggle out of her 🙂
Was that supposed to be wcscoll, not wcsoll?
...they're the same picture
fixed, lol
"How ~~green~~ clean was my ~~valley~~ code base then and the code base of them that have gone. Before the technical debt heap rose up, burying everything in its path."
Mwyn is a Super Furry Animals album, and I believe the biggest selling Welsh album of all time. Y Teimlad is a real tear jerker. Cwytch is a cuddle. Heard Nigel Owens say it to two misbehaving players during a rugby match once.
The rest I dunno…
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